Op-ed: Who funds local candidates?
The Chester Telegraph | Feb 04, 2025 | Comments 7
By Madeline Bodin
To know what to expect next time, I wanted to learn more about what happened this time in four local races for state representative. I guessed that funding was k ey. I examined the Vermont Secretary of State’s database of campaign contributions and what I found shattered my belief that our local politics are relationship-based.
Two individuals, Lenore Follansbee Broughton of Burlington and J. Hunter Melville of South Woodstock, provided a significant portion of the funding for several local candidates for state representative. They contributed 18.7 percent, 25 percent, 65 percent and a stunning 74 percent of what the Republican candidates for state representative in, respectively, Chester, Ludlow, Cavendish and Andover raised for their campaigns.
Jan Payne of Andover, who received the smallest dollar amount ($1,620), but the largest percentage of her total funding from these two donors – 74 percent – lost her election to Chris Morrow. The rest won.
I believe we need to be alert to what these donations may be telling us about candidates, and watchful for the donors’ influence, if used. By law, campaign donors don’t have to explain their choices to voters, but we should at least be aware that they have a role in local campaigns.
As we take a closer look, let me acknowledge that Vermont has state laws for campaigns and contributors, and nothing I’m telling you about is illegal. The question is: Do you want our local elections to be funded by people who know the candidates?
The limit for one person to contribute to a campaign for state representative is $1,120. The names of people contributing more than $100 to a campaign are public record.
Candidates must submit information on both the contributions they receive and how they spend the funds. There are no secrets or expectations of privacy. To gather this information, I simply looked at the Vermont Secretary of State’s campaign finance database.
Broughton, who in Vermont is a major donor to conservative causes, donated from $500 to $1,000 to each local Republican state representative candidate in Chester, Andover, Cavendish and Ludlow. Broughton’s politics have been pieced together by Seven Days, an alt-weekly, and other sources based on her donations. How our local candidates fit in is a mystery.
In the 2024 general election, Broughton contributed to 24 of the 150 campaigns for state representative, including V.L. Coffin of Cavendish, Janet Payne of Andover, Kevin Winter of Ludlow and Thomas Charlton of Chester. She also donated to five campaigns for state senator, including Windsor County candidates Andrea Murray and Jack Williams, both of whom lost. She contributed $39,530 to state campaigns in the 2024 general election.
It’s not that I mind people from out of district making contributions. I have no problem with former college roommates supporting their friend’s campaign. I have no problem with children, parents, uncles or aunts donating to a loved one, no matter where they live. In fact, I find all of these things adorable. I’m in favor of giving until it hurts when you find a candidate you believe in, or to the candidate running against one you find loathsome.
I believe if you or I were to ask any of those friends and relatives why they donated to that candidate, they would happily give us an answer.
In a case like this, I have to wonder whose needs are being championed. I wonder what Broughton’s relationship is to the candidates she supported. I phoned her and asked how she came to contribute to candidates in Chester, Ludlow and Cavendish. She said, “I would rather not speak with you about that, but thanks for thinking of me.” I expected no more, since she’s put off savvier Vermont political reporters for years.
Melville donated the individual maximum, $1,120 each to Payne, Coffin and Charlton’s campaigns.
Melville also donated $1,120 to Andrea Murray of Windsor County, which is less than the $1,680 maximum for a state Senate campaign contribution. He donated $250 to the campaign of Amanda Ellis-Thurber of Brattleboro. Someone at his same address, listed only as “J. Hunter,” contributed $1,120 to Winter’s campaign.
Over the years, Melville has donated to state representative candidates who live in Cavendish, Westminster West, Westminster and Middlesex. Again, all Republicans. I can’t find any record of him ever contributing to a campaign for state representative in the district where he lives, Windsor-5. I called the most recent Republican candidate for state representative there, just to make sure, and he didn’t remember getting a donation from Melville.
I snail-mailed, then emailed Melville and asked how he picks the candidates he supports and why — except for Murray — he donates to people he can’t vote for. He replied, “I did receive your first email but prefer not to discuss my political contributions in a public forum.”
Facebook and LinkedIn gave me a glimpse of Melville, but offered no hint of how he picks who to support.
What I found in the Democratic campaigns is different. The Democrats each had many more contributors. For example, in the Cavendish-Weathersfield-Baltimore race, Broughton and Melville were two of the four people (and one PAC) who contributed to Coffin, the Republican. Mark Yuengling, the Democrat, had over five times as many contributors. (He lost.)
Each Democratic candidate, on the other hand, had a unique set of donors. Even the Democratic Party didn’t contribute to every candidate.
When it comes to these Republican funders, it’s the lack of accountability to voters that I find disturbing. It’s the silence of the people influencing the election that rubs me the wrong way.
If my local election for state rep is a pawn in someone’s game, I’d like to know, at least, that a game is being played. We can’t hold these political donors accountable, but candidates and elected officials answer to voters, not to donors. With our votes, we can make sure that they do.
Madeline Bodin has experience researching complex topics as a science journalist. She was a freelance contributor to the Rutland Herald for 25 years. Her work has also appeared in VTDigger, The Boston Globe, The Hartford Courant, The Chicago Sun-Times, Newsday and many other publications.
Filed Under: Commentary • Op-ed
Ms. Bodin, Firstly I am very surprised that you would write a piece like this at this time, in not just Vermont’s, but our countries history. I am shocked at your inability to “read the room.” For the first time in a very long time, Vermonters in large numbers, stood up, in good conscience to support candidates that reflected their values, needs and beliefs. Your story is mirroring the behavior that has driven so many of us, myself included, AWAY from a completely unhinged Democratic Party. I was a Democrat for years and years until I realized, like so many, that the Democratic Party left me. My second thought on this op-ed is that Tom Charlton particularly is known to so many of us as a highly moral, intelligent and phenomenal person in the community. The idea that you would try to cast any dark light on him is just one more example of what drives Vermonters away from your point of view, in droves at this point. Incredibly disappointing, incredibly disconnected.
Significantly absent from Ms. Bodin’s commentary is any discussion of the issues that were important to voters in this past election. Many Republican candidates in the state rallied around the GET REAL https://www.vtgop.org/getreal platform which called for, for example, removing the costly and unachievable mandates of the Global Warming Solutions Act; and the streamlining of Act 250 to remove costly regulations and barriers to the construction of much needed housing. If political donors 1) support candidates who stand for positions on issues that the donors think are important, 2) make their donations legally and transparently, it seems they are doing one thing and one thing only, which is exercising their right to support whomever they please. If Ms. Bodin thinks wrong has been done she should prove it rather than insinuate it without any evidence whatsoever.
Hello Mrs. Bodin – I agree that people prefer to be represented fairly and honestly by their elected officials and, interestingly, by the press.
You should be pleased to know that my donors were uniformly gracious and encouraging, and expressed no nefarious expectations of leverage with regard to my attention or representation, a dark doubt you seem to suggest. You may also notice that among my donors are no political action committees, no corporate interests, no special interest groups.
I neither pursued nor accepted “endorsements” by any organization, including organizations I trust and support. This was intentional. The only endorsement I have ever been interested in is that of our voters. Though it may not have furthered your journalistic goals, a phone call really would have assuaged these gloomy suspicions quite simply.
The other candidates you reference are honest, and straightforward. I am honored to work with them, and to represent all of my amazing neighbors in our district. I am sure you are relieved to know that I stand by one of my earliest campaign promises: “what you see is what you get.”
This is the kind of information that should be more accessible for voters. Thank you for this.
Respectfully, for someone who says “I don’t mind” several times and who points out nothing illegal was done, this piece you wrote certainly implies things were done that should not have been. If you truly don’t mind, why did you do all that digging, and write this piece? “Frankly, I have to wonder” does not sound like someone is is not finding fault somewhere. These people won their elections, because people voted for them, that is all that matters. The $1,000 contributions per candidate you mention hardly seem to be coming from Charles Foster Kane’s Xanadu.
It is likely the democratic candidates had more contributors because quite a few progressives in Vermont have more money to throw around than their born in Vermont, blue collar neighbors. If they had more contributors and still lost, what is the point here other than being divisive?
My suggestion is, respect the people who won, be happy a wider, more balanced cross-section of Vermonters are being represented, and work toward bringing people together rather than casting aspersions. Voters spoke, people were elected. This is a good thing, and we should be happy the process works.
Malcolm you are 100% correct. Tom did a great job being available to the people. The Vermont Republican party is united like it has not been in probably 20 plus years . The huge gains of the Republican Party are a direct result of that unity . The people absolutely did not want what the Vermont democrat party has been selling . Higher taxes and unaffordable heating cost and a extremely bad vision for the future of Vermont
Perhaps Ms. Bodin should ask the candidates who accepted the donations about their relationship with those donors. In Tom Charlton’s case, I would say he won, not based on who his donors were but the fact that he actually got out there and campaigned more than his opponent did.